Should You Deploy SharePoint?
Jinfo Blog

By James Mullan

Abstract

SharePoint is much more than just a document collaboration tool; its social and collaborative elements are continually being strengthened and it now also serves as a social computing platform. However, alternative products are available. James Mullan asks why you should choose SharePoint to be your enterprise collaboration solution.

Item

A few years ago most people might have thought of SharePoint as just a document collaboration tool but now SharePoint is so much more.

In addition to document collaboration, SharePoint is often used by organisations to build:

• Intranets
• Wikis
• Extranets
• Websites
• Collaboration platforms.

Increasingly SharePoint is also being used as a social computing platform.

Meteoric Rise

In light of this, it's obvious why so many organisations either have or are looking at deploying SharePoint as an enterprise content management tool. SharePoint's meteoric rise is likely to continue, especially with the integration of Yammer and Microsoft's continued work on the social and collaborative elements.

However, SharePoint was - and still is - predominantly built for a very specific set of organisations, namely those with a lot of employees, a large IT team and a robust infrastructure that can support the demands of SharePoint.

SharePoint has also been around for a while and whilst its newer updates are incorporating more social functionality, enterprise information technology has made significant advances since SharePoint launched. Many new tools now provide a very similar experience to SharePoint, but at a much lower cost.

Complexity

Another reason organisations might want to consider an alternative to SharePoint is the complexity associated with it.

There is no doubt that SharePoint is a very powerful application, which can be used to create a number of different tools. But this means it can be complex to understand, both for those individuals using it and for administrators.

Choosing to use SharePoint also means you're tied in very tightly to the Microsoft Office products and for many organisations, especially those trying to move away from email as a communication tool, this might not be a good option.

Considerations

Whilst there may be a number of reasons why an organisation might not consider SharePoint, there are also some very good reasons for considering SharePoint.

It's important to consider a number of factors when thinking about SharePoint. These include:

• Cost
• Which features are required
• How closely the SharePoint product matches the objectives and strategy of the organisation that is looking at it.

FreePint Subscribers can log in to read my full article called "Is There Really an Alternative to SharePoint?" where I look at some of the potential alternatives to SharePoint and the functionality that they can offer compared to that of SharePoint.

Editor's Note: The Social Enterprise

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